


At the Bottom of the Glass

by lusteralliance (orphan_account)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Drinking, Eloping, F/F, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Reconciliation, STOP IT. shes a good character., also for those of you hating on leonie and upsetting her va, anyway enjoy im in shanghai stuff is crazy, leonie.....sis.., marianne will save u everything is gonna be ok, this fic is actually a barrier for another sylvelix im working on oops, ur just mean and also need to shuttup, we have cool hotel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-10-02 00:23:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20446802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/lusteralliance
Summary: There's beer, and the nightly hustle and bustle of the tavern. The usual welcome distractions to Leonie.And then there's her.





	At the Bottom of the Glass

**Author's Note:**

> MARIONIE WAS MY RIDE OR DIE BEFORE I EVER HEARD OF SYLVELIX AND I FEEL BAD FOR NOT WRITING ANYTHING FOR THEM UNTIL NOW

The tavern was loud. Well, it was always loud. But Leonie's table was quiet. Every night, it was her and her glass of beer. And when her first glass was done, her second kept her company. Sometimes a man who'd had too many drinks would wander over and sit himself down and try to sweet talk her, but Leonie wasn't a big fan of sweets, so he left quickly.

It was better this way. Alcohol didn't remind her of the past.

But she did. Leonie saw her when the usual drinkers went quiet, looked up a little and looked back down again, muttered some things under their breath, scooted closer to the bar table on their stools when she glided past. Her soft light chocolate eyes; they roamed the dimly lit, smoky tavern, and then they landed on Leonie, and then she smiled just a smidge and turned to walk towards her.

Leonie stared at the foam of her beer.

"Is...is this seat taken?"

"No. But's not for you."

Marianne bit her lip, slipping a short lock of periwinkle hair behind her ear. Her other hand ran along the back of the wooden chair beside Leonie. And Leonie hated how badly she wanted to be that chair.

"Leonie...I'm worried about you," Marianne whispered. "Won't you let me talk to you?"

"Ah, I'm fine, really, yeah," Leonie lied, her voice thick and slurred from...whatever the bartender put in her glass. "Now leave me 'lone. This place doesn't treat your kind well."

Marianne's nervous brown eyes grew sad. "My kind?"

"Yeah. Your...you...fancy-pants nobles, got stuff going for you, the...y'know." Leonie had lost her _mind_ on tonight's special brew. She waved her hand lazily, her eyes half open, the tavern darker than usual, her mine fuzzier.

"Leo…" Leonie winced when Marianne whispered that to her. That sweet little nickname she'd used years before, when they visited Leonie's village and Marianne first held her hand. It was only for an instant, but it was something. Everything. "I care about you."

"Yeah, well," Leonie sighed, and she took her glass with her when she threw her head back and downed her drink. She slammed the glass back onto the wooden table and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "I don't."

Marianne sat down.

"Okay, that's not what I meant," Leonie corrected herself drunkenly. "Like...I'm fine. Is what I meant. Company's good, I'm good, we're all good."

Marianne touched Leonie's cheek, and Leonie leaned back in her chair, lowering her head. The chair squeaked sadly, and Leonie huffed, folding her arms.

"Does beer taste good? I think I might have some," Marianne asked, and when Leonie looked, there was a shy grin on her flushed face. Leonie smiled too.

"It tastes like garbage. Let's get you some orange juice."

They drank in silence. Leonie ordered another glass of beer, and when she was about to order another, Marianne took the hand she raised and placed it on the table.

"...Leonie, look at me."

Leonie looked at her. One of those dainty, feathery hands was trembling as it held her half-empty glass of orange juice. The other clung to Leonie's fingers delicately, frightened but yearning, like a moth did to a light. Leonie closed her hand into a loose fist.

"When you left, there…" Marianne shook her head, staring at her feet under the table. "...there was this hole in my heart, like this gaping spot that made it hurt to breathe."

Leonie stared at her empty beer glass, watching the bubbles of foam sizzle and pop without a sound.

"I thought I couldn't protect you." The mercenary closed her eyes at Marianne's tiny voice. It was nearly a whimper. It wasn't the alcohol talking, since she'd had juice. It was her heart. And Leonie hated that honest little heart of Marianne's because it broke hers every day.

"You didn't have to protect me, Marianne."

"But I _wanted_ to!" Marianne whispered, squeezing Leonie's hand. "I wanted to be someone you could depend on! I wanted to be your...your savior…but now I know, I—I can't do anything."

"...You really know how to rile a girl up, Mari," Leonie growled, and Marianne let go of her fist and the glass and clutched her hands together tightly under her bosom. In fear. Leonie had a habit, and that was making people scared of her, and she liked it better than being vulnerable. "Don't give me that 'I can't do anything' hogwash again, you know that's not true at all."

Marianne stared at her glass, and then she breathed, "Sorry."

"_No_, don't—" Leonie drew a hand over her face. "Don't be sorry. It's my fault for being impatient. All right? But if I hear another peep of self-deprecation from you tonight, or ever, really, I'm loosing arrows."

Marianne said nothing. And then she giggled a little, raising her hand to touch her upper lip with her knuckle as she did; a noblewoman's gesture, obviously. Leonie huffed and rested her chin in her palm. There was going to be some kind of heartfelt speech coming up, she just knew.

"You're right, Leonie." Marianne took a small sip of her orange juice. "I _can_ do a lot. I can sew, and care for my father's horses, and ride them and the pegasi, and I have faith, and I have friends and family, and I have...happiness." The noblewoman Leonie fell head over heels for in her youth a hundred times over looked up at her, her soft chocolate eyes glowing. "That's why I came here, for you. I want to help you find happiness."

"I'm perfectly happy," Leonie lied. Marianne gently touched her hand, the one that was gripping her empty glass so hard it was about to shatter. Her fingers left a tingling, cold sensation in its wake on Leonie's skin.

"You won't find happiness at the bottom of your glass, Leo," Marianne breathed. "But...but you can find it with your friends, and your family, your village. And nature, and your hobbies. And...and me."

Leonie let go of her glass and took Marianne's hand, still glaring at the empty chair opposite of them. She knew that if she looked at that beautiful woman even one more time, she would die.

"I care about you, Leonie…!" Marianne sniffled. Oh, goddess, now she was crying. Leonie's heart twisted and shattered and crumbled to dust at the quivering in Marianne's soft voice. "I want to make you happy."

The tavern was loud. Well, it was always loud. But now, it felt dead silent; it felt like all the world's eyes had fallen on Leonie, watching, waiting for her next move. Waiting for her to fix the bond she'd broken when she took her horse and her bow and she left, scattering the scraps of a love she'd been shamed out of bearing.

Commoners didn't mingle with the nobility. That was just the way things were. But here was a noble, who had come to a tavern stinking of filthy folk and alcohol and smoke, in search of a commoner. Marianne had travelled about the countryside to find Leonie, and Leonie wanted nothing to do with her. And it made her feel sick.

Leonie turned her gaze to look at Marianne, and she saw the dark flushes of makeup ruined by tears staining Marianne's cheeks. Leonie hesitated, then gently touched her face. Marianne snuffled and pressed into her hand, and Leonie dried her tears and cleaned her face with a napkin.

"You shouldn't wear makeup, I can barely recognize you when you're in that stuff," Leonie told her, and Marianne sniffed and nodded, giving her a watery smile. Her natural lips were velvety and a shy pink, and her cheeks were rosy and blotchy when she blushed. Her eyebrows weren't as bold as when they were drawn onto her face, and her skin looked as soft as silk under the dim light of the tavern's four working lamps.

"You know what, Mari, you're right. You've always been right. I can't find true happiness when I drink. Well, if I'm being honest, I'm not really trying to find happiness. Beer is...a good distraction." Leonie crumpled up the makeup-y napkin in her gloved hand, then tossed it into her empty beer glass. 

"From what?" Marianne asked, her fingers laced tightly together with Leonie's. Leonie sighed and shook her head.

"From you. Obviously." Marianne flushed deeply, and she smiled, and Leonie felt the edge of her lip curl up a little as she smiled too. "I thought about you every living moment, and I hated it. I felt awful about everything."

"It wasn't your fault, Leonie," Marianne insisted. Leonie abruptly raised a hand to stop her, still irritable from alcohol. 

"No, you're not getting it. It was my fault. That's why I didn't just come back. If it wasn't me, I'd have been back at your window like I used to be every night. You know, climbing up the wall like a madwoman, sitting on your windowsill and calling your name outside the curtain as if I were some kind of fairy tale prince." Marianne laughed, and Leonie couldn't help feeling a flush of pride when she thought about her younger days. The moss and dirt under her nails when she clambered up the side of the manor of House Edmund, the straining, gasping of her voice when she called, "Maaaaaaaariiiiiiiiii!" after all that. She was mad. Mad with what, Leonie didn't need to think to remember.

"That was my favorite part of the day," Marianne giggled. "Opening my curtain and seeing you lounging like your fairy tale prince in my flowers…! You were my hero, Leonie. You still are. Striking out on your own like that, living your own life. I could never dream of doing such a thing."

"Well, yeah, but look at where I ended up!" Leonie threw her arms over her head, gesturing broadly to the dirt hole she sat in, and drank in five times a week. "This is a pigstye. I'm a pig."

There was a glint of mischief in Marianne's eyes, and she grinned. "You know I like animals."

"Marianne!" Leonie snorted, and she elbowed the noblewoman as courteously as she could, and Marianne laughed again and lay her head against Leonie's arm, her eyes tightly shut with pure euphoria. Leonie had once vowed to do anything just to see her smile like that.

Marianne sighed and buried her face in the hollow of Leonie's shoulder, blushing. Leonie's face was warm too, but it always was after she drank. Maybe it was something else tonight.

"Leonie...my family is worried for you." Leonie raised an eyebrow.

"They are?"

"Yes! I used to talk to them about you…" Marianne giggled again, shyly. "My knight in shining armor. My big, strong, fearless mercenary. One day you'd come on a mottled horse and sweep me up and carry me off to somewhere far away, and we'd live happily ever after. Our own fairy tale."

Leonie grinned sillily. "Wow. What'd they think of me?"

"My father was a bit skeptical, but my mother was all for it. She just wanted me to get outside, honestly…!" The two women laughed in each other's arms. "When I told them you ran away, because...because of the incident in town, they were devastated. For the both of us."

Leonie's saliva felt sour like lemon pulp when she remembered the incident. A nobleman had accosted her and Marianne for walking so close together! And when Leonie stood up for them and told him they were simply in love, he started jeering at Marianne for stooping so low to be seeing a commoner. And a woman, at that. And Marianne was so embarrassed and terrified, and Leonie knew she had caused this, and she left two nights later without a note or a sign of her disappearance. It was better that way. That's what she'd thought.

"...I'm sorry," Leonie mumbled, at last. Those two words were the hardest to push out, yet when they left her lips, she didn't feel lighter at all. "It was all my fault, and then I went and messed it up further."

Marianne raised her head, her brown eyes round with sadness. "That's not true, Leonie. It wasn't any of us. It was that...that wretch of a man who couldn't accept that things aren't all what we were taught to believe." Marianne's thumb brushed the coarse skin over Leonie's knuckles. "Love is not always a noble and a noble, or a commoner and a commoner. Love is not always a man and a woman. Love is not another person's choice...it is ours. And ours alone."

Leonie nodded. She felt Marianne's soft hair brush her neck again when the noblewoman rested her head once more on the mercenary's shoulder.

"Come away with me, Leo," Marianne whispered. Leonie looked away from her glass, and into Marianne's soft brown eyes. "Let's be happy. Somewhere far away, where...where we can live happily ever after."

Leonie grinned. "And you thought I was going to be the one to sweep you off your feet and carry you off into the sunset."

"You will," Marianne giggled. "Dorte is still in the stables." Leonie chanced a kiss on Marianne's forehead and pulled her up into her arms.

"Clever lady." 

Leonie strode through the crowded tavern and ignored the eyes she attracted, and she stepped out into the cool night and placed Marianne on her feet by the tree she'd tied her dark gray stallion to.

"Sorry I don't have a mottled horse," Leonie told her, helping her onto the saddle before leaping on herself.

"That's okay. The horse isn't the one that matters now, anyway." Leonie leaned her head back so the nape of her neck brushed Marianne's cheek as the noblewoman wrapped her arms around Leonie's waist.

The mercenary untied and tugged at the reins. "Go, boy. Hyah!" Her steed whinnied and galloped away onto the dirt path leading from the tavern, a tall lamp surrounded by flitting moths lighting the way. To where, Leonie didn't know. But she didn't care. The wind in her hair was familiar, and yet, it felt somewhat different.

Marianne sighed and nestled into the nook of Leonie's shoulder blades as they rode on into the indigo night, a drunken dash for freedom, and for each other.

"...That orange juice tasted funny."


End file.
